Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday February 20, 2014 @03:57AM
from the no-food-no-peace dept.

retroworks writes "Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we're seeing them now. The paper's author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time—and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest."

I don't think the intent was to provide for all riots, just ones that met their criteriA when the fao index climbed above 210.

In essence, they are saying when X happens, Y follows. Not that all of Y is created by X. In a car anology, it would be like a new person shows up in New York City. We know when people cross the George Wahongton bridge in their car fro. West to east, they end up in NYC. But we also know they can fly in and enter from other routes by car too.so while X is true for Y, but Y is not limi

Currently there are massive riots in The Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand; signs of growing civil unrest in central Europe - reports of riots in Brazil; All countries of course known for their muslim leadership...

Occupy wall street was a protest against the rich in the little country known as USA.

A typical muslim country is it ? Not really.

Well, it's at least a land full of religious conservatives who don't drink tea but rather push it into the river.There are many people who read and think too much about ancient obsolete books and think they have all the answers.

Occupy was peaceful though, at least until the cops started attacking the protesters. Unfortunately it seems that the only way to create real change is to riot now, as governments have made damn sure peaceful protest is ignored.

Islam is a religion not a race. Hence the term Muslim, which means a follower of Islam, is not a racial term. "Muzzies" would however fall under the definition of bigotry though. Which is similar but not quite the same as racism.

Islam is a religion not a race. Hence the term Muslim, which means a follower of Islam, is not a racial term.

It's not quite that simple in practice. In Lebanon the main communities are Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Druze. Each community includes many non-religious people and some who would describe themselves as atheists. But if you were born into the Sunni community, then your family is Sunni, the militia defending you is Sunni, and the militias attacking you are probably Shiite or Christian. That's your identity, regardless what you think about theological issues. It may not be a "race", but it's certainly an

Yeah...why should an abbreviation of a word with no other alteration be considered offensive? Cf. "Jap", "homo"...oh, it's because of *how* we say the word, not the word itself? But apparently my habit of shortening people's names down to 1 or 2 syllables is bigoted.

Wow you are completely ignorant about the topic. "Jewish" is a race, a culture, AND a religion. And Islam does have racial connotations in that battles involving Islam are often divided along racial divisions as well. The same applies to Christianity. There are exceptions of course, but the pattern remains.

And Islam does have racial connotations in that battles involving Islam are often divided along racial divisions as well.

Except wherever the population exhibits either no such divisions (or, conversely, the picture is so variegated that no 1:1 matching of finely distinguished races/ethnicities and religious affiliations exist), like the clashes between the Muslim Indians and the Hindu Indians, right? And Indonesians seem to be largely the same case.

uhm your heart was in the right place, but Judeans from Judea became the Jews. Unless you are Jewish to begin with, straining as hard as you can will not make you a Jew. You can convert, but will probably hear Goy jokes whispered wherever you go. Its a Raceligion.

Well, except for the part where they kill you if you believe but then leave (apostasy [wikipedia.org])...and they're not too hot on people who believe the wrong branch (Sunni vs. Shia) or people who choose other religions, either.

I'm taking the "racists mush?" question to have been answered with "yes" when you go name a people "muzzies".

The point was, you're claiming Muslim rioting as a counterpoint, but even if its accepted that those riots are a part of this this trend of rioting spoken of-- they don't fit even your pattern, they *aren't* a counterpoint simply because you state it. Naming them to counter the argument is just racist handwaving at best: oh, well the Muslims (er, muzzies) are rioting, so clearly there's no pattern be

The line is blurred. Jews consider themselves a race, but Judaism is also a religion. When people talk about Muslim countries they mainly mean middle eastern ones run by Arabs or Asians (and don't confuse Asians with Orientals).

It's pretty obvious you're using "muslim" to mean "middle-eastern." Being "technically correct" doesn't really matter in casual conversation. You're a dick either way - we're just debating how to describe what *kind* of dick you are at this point.

You mean the same muslims in China (Uyghurs), Malaysia, and Philippines are all middle-eastern?

Race and culture are two entirely separate things. Do not conflate the two. Above all, do not insinuate racism by another person. You only espouse your own ignorance in doing so. No, the problem is Islam. It's an evil theocratic fascist movement!!! There is nothing racists in point out the level of violence from this twisted culture.

It's neither of those things. The fertile crescent and parts of N Africa suffered a sever drought which coincided with the GFC. 10% of Syria's population was internally displaced between 2007-2011, forced off their farm and into the cities. The cables leaked by Snowden included a (correct) prediction of civil war in Syria due to the internal displacement, the diplomat even correctly predicted the city where it started.

Well, if you check reliable media outlets, a week after events, they usually do a better job of determining the source of the frustration. The protestors usually say something like: "U.S. is in our country replacing our interests with theirs, that's why I lost my job and my son is imprisoned for...what? No, I don't even get T.V. I've never heard of that movie."

There may be "triggers" that cause various groups to encourage protests to get started, but to motivate thousands of people to protest in areas where

Food prices, politics, religion, losing the World Cup. The model should state "people riot when they don't get what they want". And then there's this 'Global Uprisings' thing. Different populations have different sensitivities to prices on various commodities. India might experience food riots. In the USA, we didn't 'riot' until the bond yields paid to the trust fund babies dropped after the banking crash. I have a difficult time calling that global.

Actually, they are paraded around. Its one of the main reasons we have them. It stabilizes the pricesof food so we don't have massive swings downward which would cause farmers to lose their farms and then massive swings upwards from the resulting shortages.

In the long run, the slight increase in food costs are strategic in that it allows enough standing production and reserve capacity that the midwest can flood, the south can drought, the west can catch fire, and your food bill doesn't end up costing more t

What worries me about this sort of knowledge, is that it could make it possible for political leaders to keep the masses working their asses off just above the breadline. But they can avoid pushing it so far that they get the kind of political activism that might result in regime change.

The problem with these uprisings, particularly in Ukraine and Venezuela, is that they're not fueled by food prices. I don't know the fine details about the Ukrainian case but I've been reading quite a lot about Venezuela. And I happen to live in Argentina so I see a lot of parallels between the Venezuelan case and the Argentinian (Venezuela is a little window to the future for us Argentinians).

Basically, Chavez got to power through a coup in the 90s. Since then, Venezuela has been going downhill. Like all "

I've read a lot of those old "doomsaying" articles and in general they're interesting. But the Malthusians have been preaching the same apocalypses for a long time now and they've generally failed to come true.

I agree resource scarcity is essentially at the root of most of our problems, and over at http://www.dictatorshandbook.n... [dictatorshandbook.net] the discussion basically revolves around the idea that religious wars are a proxy for resource grabs, while bad governments either prevent more violence or promote it to achieve

I've read a lot of those old "doomsaying" articles and in general they're interesting. But the Malthusians have been preaching the same apocalypses for a long time now and they've generally failed to come true.

Except this guy predicted riots which then did not fail to come true. So uh, what does that have to do with this?

http://news.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
A rare instance of getting it right. This very prediction was predicted before the riots happened. Predicted when, and wasn't too terribly far off I suppose. Of course slashdot having no memory didn't even realize it was already covered.

Well there is a lot more to it than that... Angry people must also have little to nothing to lose. That's where the tyrants and their greedy supporters always seem to screw up. They need to maintain a minimum level of "something to lose" to maintain control over their subjects. But the greed of the supporters is unlimited and that's a problem of the leadership to help them understand...which they inevitably fail to do.

Actually, most Muslims are by no means radical. Quite a few are pissed at the radical asshats who give the whole bunch a bad name. And bluntly, most of the "radicals" don't give a shit about Islam actually. They just noticed that this is how they get us to listen. Just say "I'm gonna bomb your $place" and suddenly the "Westener" shuts up and listens. They found out that this works. Not only that, but that we start apologizing for "insulting" them. So anything we do or say is suddenly an insult.

Fuck it!

If you don't wanna see caricatures of your prophet, you can do what I did because I didn't like "2 girls 1 cup". I simply didn't look. Yes, whoever looks at it is a sicko, or for you, dear Islamist, a heretic but guess what, it's none of your business. I will not apologize for not being like you want me to be. Why? Because in my country where I live I can be the way I want to be! If I come to some country where the Islam is considered the state religion, I will of course heed the laws there and yes, that means that I will certainly not show around caricatures of your Prophet, because that's not allowed there. No problem. Your country, your rules.

But my country, my rules! And it's gonna be a very cold day in HELL before I let some radical, religious idiot rule my country.

The rational response was not to hate Nazism per se, but the things that made it vicious. Xenophobia and scapegoating are high on that list. Once you are committed against xenophobia and ultra-nationalism in general, it automatically follows that you're committed against Nazism in particular.

Likewise it makes no sense for you to fear Islam per se, but rather the vicious things you associate with Islam.

If you knew more about Islam, you would see that those things are not universal in people who consider them

If you mean hating an ideology that wants to subdue or kill all others....

It certainly isn't impossible to find stuff that implies that in the Koran. However, it isn't impossible to find stuff that implies that in The Bible either. Cherry-pick a verse here or there, and it can look pretty bad. It misses the point of the religion completely to do that, but I've seen it done.

So out of curiosity, do you hate Christianity too, or are you just being selective about which religion you apply those standards to?

For any Christian reading the parent and thinking perhaps its fine to throw

Sure, keep displaying your ignorance with that false dichotomy, and demonising people who don't want to pay to have their countries filled up with illiterate, violent scum.

Sure, you might be happy to have your kids pack-raped by roving gangs of young Muslim men. YOU might be happy with suffering disrespect and hatred at the hands of foreigners in your own country. Just don't inflict it on me or my kids, and furthermore, don't expect me to pay for it.

The so called bread price was always a key trigger for uprisings. If the price climbed faster than the actual income of the people, hunger was unavoidable. And of course people tend to become violent when they have suddenly not enough to eat.

In 2006, the food index was only 127. Yet, there were 15 large scale riots, 9 large scale strikes, 6 wars, of which at least 2 new wars in 2006, and countless other conflicts not mentioned on the wikipedia page about conflicts in 2006. And I just picked a random year.

Agreed.While I suspect that yes, food costs and shortages certainly make such uprisings more likely (hungry people tend to get a little crabby and short tempered) the causality of this is highly suspect.

I'd suspect that yes, at extreme values, hunger can drive civil issues. Otherwise it's more of an aggravating factor, as the uprisings around the world in 2013 were - at least as far as the news covered them - largely political and opportunistic. Note in particular the sort of 'infectious' pattern, where o

Indeed. With a world as large and complex as we have, there are virtually always conflicts that can be cited as happening at any given time. Being able to point out that some happened when a particular trigger condition was met does not in an of itself even demonstrate correlation, let alone causation.

We need a model to tell us that food shortages increase the risk of uprisings? How about one that tells us the probability of riots when the temperature increases. Sounds like someone got funding, and produced a study proving the obvious.

Just maybe we might want to consider making it illegal to use farm land to make ethanol. And maybe we could keep prices down in the US if we halted the export of agricultural products and seafood. And if we were ever intelligent enough to close our borders and have enforced birth control quotas we could regain economic sanity.

Obviously you haven't been paying attention [autoblog.com]. The same ones that move our food to our local grocery stores. Diesel trucks already are pretty damn efficient for what they do. And being that fuel prices already cut into barely-living wage standards (and unsafe sleepless driving), it's to their advantage to increase MPG through market forces on their own. The main goal of Obama isn't to increase the MPG standards, but reduce greenhouse emissions from semi trucks. The goals may be one-in-the-same, but the premis

The price of a good is not dependent on its production cost. The price of a good is only dependent on how much you can ask to net the highest profit. The only time the production cost comes into play is when the asking price drops below the production cost, then it simply will not be produced anymore. Else it doesn't matter jack how much it costs to make it, the price will ALWAYS be what someone is willing to pay.

At what cost? Loss of wild habitats, sterile monocultures , pesticide poisoning of what little wildlife is left, fertilizer runoff causing o2 depletion in the rivers, soil erosion due to constant tilling, huge CO2 footprint due to fossil fuels required to produce agrichemicals and machinery to work the land and so on and on and on.

The methods of 300 years ago had survived for millenia. The way we've abused the planet in the last century we'll do well to be able to maintain this production for the next 100

At what cost? Loss of wild habitats, sterile monocultures , pesticide poisoning of what little wildlife is left, fertilizer runoff causing o2 depletion in the rivers, soil erosion due to constant tilling, huge CO2 footprint due to fossil fuels required to produce agrichemicals and machinery to work the land and so on and on and on.

And how exactly does it contradict simple fact that food availability does not go down?

The methods of 300 years ago had survived for millenia. The way we've abused the planet in the last century we'll do well to be able to maintain this production for the next 100 years, never mind 1000.

Oh yes, lament about 'good old days' and abuse of planet while using your computer, living in nice apartment, driving a car and enjoying modern medicine. We are quite adaptable species, when environment changes we will ad

"while using your computer, living in nice apartment, driving a car and enjoying modern medicin"

Sure, I use modern tech , but I use public transport and I don't have 10 kids. There's something called sustainability.

Ooh, you use public transport so it is all right. That minuscule reduction in somehow balances all resources spent to to build your house, your computer and million other modern conveniences that you have no problem accepting. But that's all right, you use public transport so this make your life 'sustainable' and gives you right to bitch about how *others* abuse the planet.

"We are quite adaptable species, when environment changes we will adapt again."

Oh dear, is the old hand waving "it'll be alright in the end, we don't need to worry or change" argument really all you've got?

We will change when we need to change. I see it as better argument than your pathetic hypocrisy.

But it's not like there's no progress possible regarding the state of affairs from three hundred years ago, is it? Replace pesticides with better weed management (physical or mechanical techniques), overuse of fertilizers with more reasonable dosages (aren't the Israelis are onto something with drip irrigation?), fossil fuels with sustainable energy sources etc. Really, when you think about it, it appears to me that we increased agricultural production hand in hand with minimizing human labour by merely sw

Oohhhh, and if we don't always, constantly show "empathy" (and of course, soon after, give free money and lebensraum to people who fuck up, and want everyone else to take responsibility for it) for others, we are BAD people.

Right.

This place is turning into a low-rent knockoff of Comment Is Free.

Fuck "empathy". If Third World assholes can't keep their legs crossed and they end up in a Malthusian catastrophe, why should we bail them out.

>Sadly people like you are part of the problem. But keep your head in the sand if it makes you feel better.

People like me ? And what pray-tell kind of people, am I ?You know exactly fuckall about me.You don't know if I'm married or single. You don't know if I have children. You don't know if I'm monogamous, polyamorous, a swinger. You don't know which gender I identify with, what my sexual orientation is, whether I'm religious and if so what religion.You don't know if I like anal sex, giving or receivin

>In other words you're a cheating gay man in denial - plenty of gay men get married and have kids and plenty of men like to dress up their cheating as some kind of acceptable lifestyle. Even Elton John was married to a woman once btw.

Judgemental and moralistic - but no, I don't cheat. There are no lies or secrets in our household. I have my boyfriends and girlfriends - and so does my equally bisexual wife. It's part of what we have in common. I love watching her eat pussy, she loves watching me suck cock

"Lillith held up a mirror to life, and chopped off all the bits of life that didn't fit".

I'm getting bored with this, you're also not the first person who has come up with this bigoted crap that bisexual men don't exist. You're not only judgemental, bigoted and reprehensible in every possible way - you are, like every other person like you I've known - an ignorant idiot as well.

Thank you for the incredible sense of superiority you've made me feel. I would almost imagine you're hitting on me - except for the

The tripe that bisexual people don't exist at all is one of the most common forms of biphobia. I know it may be hard for you to wrap your head around but I am genuinely attracted to people *regardless* of their physical sex.Indeed I more commonly identify as sapiosexual - I am attracted to minds and intellect, not to physical appearance or shape.

Your simple-minded heterosexist view of the world is offensive but that isn't what I hate a